Following pointed swipes at incumbent president Cyril Ramaphosa, former national boss Thabo Mbeki has recently undergone a startling change of heart. A surprising Damascus moment for a man who is usually known to stick to his guns and summarily fire – or klap – those who would challenge his smarts, or the top job he wanted to hold on to for an unprecedented three terms apparently because he could not identify a worthy heir. But it seems Mbeki, not so long ago critical of the ANC, who even publicly threw Ramaphosa under the bus for failing to implement their renewal project will wear the gear and punch the air whilst telling the fodder to remember to vote ANC.
It’s silly season, dear reader, and comrades across the board are saying their sorries, probably discreetly sliding dubious parcels under tables and extremely careful not to be caught WhatsApping the wrong people. Now is hardly the time to be seen on the off-side of the balance of forces.
Meanwhile, whilst the other ex-commander-in-chief from KZN is stopping short of calling for pregnant teenagers to be imprisoned on Robben Island as one of his new party’s – uMkhonto weSizwe – de facto election promises, the pitch is full of faces who are making a comeback just as many are being shown the red cards. Into the dugout, or changing room, because come May 29, the parliamentary seats may be lesser and everybody is quite aware life is very cold for those who are out in the ‘extra strongs’ (slang for the cheapest seating area in a venue).
As such the long knives have been drawn and perceived liabilities are walking with big targets on their backs. Those too tainted to fit through ‘the eye of the needle,’ (remember the ANC’s 2001 policy document) are sweating bullets. No, this is more because none would want to be out of a job than any attempt at uprooting corruption or to be seen to be walking on the straight and narrow towards renewal.
The writing has been on the wall since Ace Magashule was handed his ‘don’t come Monday’ last year. With the secretary-general shown the door, cages were rattled hence nobody has felt really safe and that message is being driven home as the casualties start to pile up. Once-upon-a-time darlings of the movement, like former public works minister Nathi Nhleko famous for defending the building of that famous R240m palatial coastal homestead, has apparently seen the wisdom to tender his resignation before he’s been shown his own Section 189 retrenchment notice. Too much scandal surrounds him even though when Jacob Zuma was the boss, the comrades unwaveringly agreed with him that indeed the fire pool at Nkandla was a necessary feature for the president’s safety. Now, he’s seemingly on his own; no phone calls or SMSs except maybe from the guy whose hide he was trying to save all those years ago.
As the Multi-Party Charter was hobbled when two of its member parties (the obscure Spectrum National Party and Unemployed People’s Movement) didn’t meet the requirements to run in the upcoming election, one of its signatories, the IFP was getting ready for its own manifesto launch. On the back of impressive by-election wins in Newscastle, they will certainly wish to make an impressive showing at Moses Mabhida – the Mecca of political grandstanding. This being their former stronghold and with some of the highest voter numbers, KZN is an essential province and to reclaim it from the ANC and keep MK and EFF at bay, the IFP will pull out all the stops.
But as media attention was thrust on the politricking, far more interesting things were unfolding on The Daily Friend (DF), online publication of the Institute for Race Relations and, rather oddly, they were coming from an unlikely voice. Rob Hersov; tongue-in-cheek billionaire with a penchant for the lifestyle of the ultra wealthy was vehemently sticking up for … you wouldn’t have guessed … the Patriotic Alliance’s Gayton McKenzie. Or maybe that was just how it looked on the surface.
We felt mildly vindicated here at eParkeni. On several articles we’ve written on how the IRR – not too different to outfits like Afriforum – had descended into an incubator of paranoia about the swaart gevaar and all those other tropes we’d thought exterminated all of 30 years ago. In a reply to the DF columnist Ivo Vegter, Hersov seemed to put forth an unpopular take to an otherwise one-dimensional (as per the DF’s comments section) narrative.
Not to deprive the reader of some wonderful writing, Vector had basically enfeebled McKenzie into a self-serving individual whose kingmakership has betrayed the DA and has consequently laid waste to all the constituencies in which his party has put the ANC in power. As a result, writes Vegtor: ‘Beaufort West had to be put under administration. Last weekend, the premier of the Western Cape, Alan Winde, said he was committed to pursuing full administration for Knysna, too, if the municipality rejected its third and final rescue offer.’
Having ripped into McKenzie, Vegtor next quotes a post on a Plettenberg Bay social media group by Hersov: ‘It is very easy to save Plett and solve this problem. Get the PA to join the multi-party coalition like Corné Mulder and Herman Mashaba (and a number of top DA execs) have asked.’ This viewpoint clearly did not go down well with Vegtor, members of the said group as well as the DF’s readership.
Hersov, on the other hand, was just getting warmed up. In a subsequent video, Vegtor quotes him as saying;
‘Im actually quite happy to be kicked off the Protecting Plett group, because I just think, you know, there are too many people that are bored housewives, keyboard warriors or whatever, who just will never, ever, listen or see the truth for what it is. And the reality is that Gayton McKenzie is anti-communist, pro-democracy, one of us.
He wants to join the multi-party coalition, and he’d bring a huge amount of value. ‘Corné Mulder provincial leader of the Freedom Front Plus in the Western Cape], Inkatha [Freedom Party], and Herman Mashaba [leader of ActionSA] want him to join. But Helen Zille [chairperson of the Federal Council of the DA] and Leon Schreiber [DA shadow minister of public service and administration] don’t, because they’re threatened by him, they’re trying to push him away because he threatens them in the Western Cape, so Gayton has correctly said: “Let me show you what I can do”.’
Hersov continues; ‘Now I don’t really care. I’m trying to save the country. I’m trying to get the multi-party coalition elected, but I think without the PA it’s going to be very, very hard. And with closed-minded people like the people on the Plett group – not all of them, but you know who I’m talking about – I just think South Africa’s got a problem. It’s not going to happen and we’re going to end up with the ANC, the EFF and Zuma for the next four or five years.’
To some extent, this isn’t an entirely baseless argument when you consider McKenzie’s seeming growing popularity with the Coloured voter. (The party boasts a membership well upward of 400 000). Not only does his party serve as a serious threat to the DA in the Western Cape, but in a few short years it has made great strides as kingmaker in the Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni metros.
But McKenzie’s criminal past as well as his shrewd political ways seem to irk the liberal voter. Despite hostile comments aimed at him, Hersov, shrugs off the negative perceptions on McKenzie and appears to be looking at a bigger picture. By his estimates (quoted verbatim);
- The DA is imploding due to the arrogance of Helen Zille and Leon Schreiber and will get the same number of votes as last time, circa 23%.
ActionSA is going sideways/nowhere. IFP is on the back foot in KZN due to Zuma. And VF+ will never get over 5% even on a good day. Both Mmusi/BOSA and Rise/Zibi are too late and too “soft”, despite getting solid funding from the Oppenheimer family and others. Collectively, all of these will deliver 15%.
The Multiparty coalition will be a damp squib and will therefore get, at most, 38% of the national vote. Helen Zille and Leon Schreiber will be forever blamed for not allowing the PA into the multiparty coalition, despite the PA being invited in by Herman Mashaba, Dr. Corne Mulder and IFP.
- The ANC will fall from above 50% to 35%.
The evil EFF will end up at 10%.
Zuma won’t have time to get his logistics and funding in place (the main reason Cyril called the election as soon as May 29th was to hobble Zuma) and will get, at most, 5%. But he and the ANC and EFF won’t ever team up as there is too much hatred and hidden bodies between them. - The rats and mice will be too hard to cobble together and the kingmaker will therefore be Gayton McKenzie/PA with 6-8%.
The likely coalitions are one of:
- ANC plus DA (the death knell for both parties). But this is still an unlikely coalition as Cyril who would support this has been reined in by the radicals in the ANC (Cyril was saved in 2017 mainly by Steve Kosseff raising R2bil for him from mainly Jewish funders but look at how he rolled over recently to be anti-Israel. once the Iran money came pouring in via MTN).
- ANC plus EFF plus PA. And we will thank the lord the PA are there as Gayton McKenzie will defend property rights against the EFF as his main call to action.’
The feud didn’t stop there. Hersov would later publish a right of reply on both BizNews as well as Daily Friend. It would seem that the liberal desire to take power from what they consider a socialist ANC government into the hands of a pro-market, laissez faire entity comes with T’s & Cs. It should be achieved with the DA firmly calling the shots and certainly with no shady characters in the fold. Fair enough. But whether this is achievable in a country of such complex demographics and whether – in the face of obstinance -Hersov will not ultimately have the last laugh is a story for tomorrow.
One thing is certain; it all gets weirder and sillier as the big day approaches. Even in our small enclaves one encounters some astonishing gestures ostensibly aimed at twisting one’s arm to vote this or that way. On a recent walk about town this writer stumbled on a surprising if welcome sight. Men and women in overalls revamping the steep road next to the NG Kerk.
In recent years it had started to look shabby and out of nowhere it was undergoing a revamp. Similar scenes have been playing out at various municipalities across the country. Even small parties have used their own money to get into the action. Sadly, as history has shown, the likelihood of such assiduous work continuing post-March 29 are unlikely. And right there is the saddest part of it all.